Flexible hoses are widely utilized in a wide variety of industrial, household, and commercial applications. One commercial application for hoses are garden or water hoses for household or industrial use. For instance, the hoses are used for watering grass, trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetable plants, vines, and other types of vegetation, cleaning houses, buildings, boats, equipment, vehicles, animals, or transfer between a fluid source and an appliance. For example, the appliance can be a wash stand, a faucet or the like for feeding cold or hot water. Another commercial application for hoses are automotive hose for fuel delivery, gasoline, and other petroleum-based products. Another application for hoses are vacuum cleaner hoses for household or commercial applications. For instance, the hoses are used with vacuum cleaners, power tools, or other devices for collecting debris or dispensing air. Fluids, such as beverages, fuels, liquid chemicals, fluid food products, gases and air are also frequently delivered from one location to another through a flexible hose.
Flexible hoses have been manufactured for decades out of polymeric materials such as natural rubbers, synthetic rubbers, thermoplastic elastomers, and plasticized thermoplastic materials. Conventional flexible hoses commonly have a layered construction that includes an inner tubular conduit, a spiraled, braided, or knitted reinforcement wrapped about the tubular conduit, and an outer cover.
Kinking and collapsing are problems that are often associated with flexible hoses. Kinking is a phenomenon that occurs, for example, when the hose is doubled over or twisted. A consequence of kinking is that the flow of fluid through the hose is either severely restricted or completely blocked. Kinking becomes a nuisance and causes a user undue burden to locate and relieve the kinked portion of the hose.
There have been previous attempts to make hoses more resistant to kink, crush, collapse, and/or burst by incorporating a spiral or helical reinforcement strip into the outer tubular layer of the hose. This construction, however, has often made these reinforced hoses unduly stiff because the embedded helix lacks the ability to flex freely. This construction in some cases has often required thicker and more rigid inner tubular layers. What is needed, therefore, is a reinforced fluid conduit in which the structural reinforcement is readily customizable to suit the different performance needs of its users.